HEXUS.bang4buck and bang4watt
Putting all the numbers into perspective, let's take a closer look at overall performance.
In a rough-and-ready assessment of the cards' bang for buck, we've aggregated the 1,920x1,080 frame-rates for four games, normalised them* and taken account of the cards' prices.
But there are more provisos than we'd care to shake a stick at. We could have chosen four different games, the cards' prices could have been derived from other sources - we tend to stick with listings from two of the UK's largest retailers - and pricing tends to fluctuate daily.
Consequently, the table below highlight a metric that should only be used as a yardstick for evaluating comparative performance with price factored in. Other architectural benefits are not covered, obviously.
| Graphics cards | ASUS GeForce GTX 480 1,536MB | ASUS GeForce GTX 470 1,280MB | ASUS GeForce GTX 465 1,024MB | Gigabyte GeForce GTX 460 SOC 1,024MB | KFA
GeForce GTX 460 LTD OC 1,024MB |
EVGA GeForce GTX 460 1,024MB | POV GeForce GTX 460 TGT UC 768MB | EVGA GeForce GTX 460 768MB | Sapphire Radeon HD 5870 1,024MB | HIS Radeon HD 5850 1,024MB | HIS Radeon HD 6870 1,024MB | Sapphire Radeon HD 6850 1,024MB | Sapphire Radeon HD 5830 1,024MB | HIS Radeon HD 5770 1,024MB |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Aggregate FPS (1,920x1,080) |
305.1 |
249.7 |
204.8 |
235 | 233 |
197.1 |
217.3 | 185.9 |
244.6 | 208.5 |
222.2 |
194.3 | 164.5 | 144.9 |
| Normalised* FPS (1,920x1,080) |
260.35 |
201.35 |
151.2 |
184.10 | 182.8 |
145.05 |
165.95 |
131.05 |
214.1 | 170.15 |
183 |
150.85 |
116.25 | 93.45 |
| Current pricing | £350 | £200 | £170 | £175 | £190 | £155 | £170 | £135 | £275 | £210 | £195 | £150 | £165 | £110 |
| bang4buck (1,920x1,080) |
0.744 | 1.007 | 0.889 | 1.052 | 0.962 | 0.936 | 0.976 | 0.971 | 0.779 | 0.810 | 0.938 | 1.006 | 0.705 | 0.850 |
| GPU power consumption** | 244 | 204 | 195 | 169 | 202 | 169 | 158 | 130 | 139 | 117 | 126 | 97 | 108 | 90 |
| bang4watt*** (1,920x1,080) |
1.067 | 0.987 | 0.775 |
1.089 | 0.905 |
0.858 |
1.05 | 1.008 | 1.54 | 1.454 |
1.452 |
1.555 |
1.076 |
1.038 |
* the normalisation refers to taking playable frame rate into account. Should a card benchmark at over 60 frames per second in any one game, the extra fps count as half. Similarly, should a card benchmark lower, say at 40fps, we deduct half the difference from its average frame rate and the desired 60fps, giving it a HEXUS.bang4buck score of 30 marks. The minimum allowable frame rate is 20fps but that scores zero.
** the GPU power consumption is derived from subtracting a flat rate of 100W - indicating system power-draw without a card - from the Call of Duty: MW2 load figure. While this figure isn't solely indicative of power pulled by the GPU, as the CPU also throttles up, it's a better metric than using peak system-draw alone.
*** the HEXUS.bang4watt score is a crude measurement of how much normalised performance the GPU provides when evaluated against GPU power-draw that's shown in the table: the former is divided by the latter. We're using the peak power-draw numbers obtained by running real-world Call of Duty: MW2.
Evaluation
Gigabyte's £175 pricing is key, and it allows the GeForce GTX 460 SOC to score the highest bang4buck out of our 14-way line up. The high frame rates in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 - a title known to favour NVIDIA cards - may have helped provide an edge, but there's no denying that the Gigabyte card offers an excellent level of performance per pound.
But whilst performance is good, the bang4watt metric paints a slightly different picture. Gigabyte's GTX 460 SOC card offers the best performance-per-watt out of all of the NVIDIA cards in our comparison, but the AMD range is clearly the more energy efficient.
